First look: new Amazon SMS purchasing system smooth, limited

Amazon has added yet another way for you to buy its products from anywhere, at …

Amazon is still working on its goal of becoming your one-stop shop for anything, at any time or any place. Today, the company introduced TextBuyIt, a sort of SMS version of its 1-Click buying system. Users can send a text message to "AMAZON" (262966) with a product name, author, artist name, ISBN, or UPC code and receive the top two Amazon search results back almost instantly. From there, they can find out more information or simply make a purchase directly from their mobile phones. Although the process is a breeze on a smartphone, Amazon's real goal is to make buying easy for those with "plain old" mobile phones.

TextBuyIt's page on Amazon.com makes it seem like all you need to do in order to get started is begin SMSing, but that's not quite true. First, you must activate your Amazon account to be used with Amazon Payments (specifically, mobile payments). It's not a particularly user-friendly process, as it takes some digging to find the button to get started (it would be easier if it was on the first screen). Once you find it (through the Mobile Payments link on the left-hand side), Amazon walks you through setting up your mobile phone to make purchases.

One you associate your mobile number with your account, it sends an SMS to you with an activation code.

(Yes, that's a Chicago hot dog as my background)

It turns out that I didn't need to enter my wonderful lemons anywhere in order to proceed with buying stuff via SMS. I eventually found a place in Amazon's preferences to enter it, though, and "officially" associated my phone number with the account.

I then texted "Guitar hero wii" to 262966 on my iPhone and got back two results (along with a bunch of instructions on how to find more info), the first of which was the item I was intending to find. Don't worry—messing around with TextBuyIt won't result in you accidentally buying anything you didn't intend to buy. You need to be very deliberate in order to make a purchase, so feel free to search for things willy-nilly.

Typing "m" will get you slightly more product info, although not much—it told me the product's release date and a couple of other minor details, but it also provided a link to the actual web page on Amazon if I wanted to find out more. When I hit "1" to buy, TextBuyIt asked me to essentially "log in" via SMS by responding with my e-mail address and zip code that is stored online.

After that, you sit and wait. Not very long though—about 20 seconds later, I got a phone call from Amazon's automated system asking me to verify whether I wanted to buy the Guitar Hero III Rock Legends bundle for the Wii.

If I had told it "yes," my transaction would be finished, and I would be able to track the order later through Amazon's web site. However, I told it to cancel my order (I'm not really in the mood to spend money right now) and received a helpful SMS confirmation.

It should be noted, however, that the service wasn't able to find everything available through Amazon's web site. I could easily find books, games, and other products that are shipped directly from Amazon, but products from third-parties sold through Amazon were hit-or-miss. For example, TextBuyIt was unable to locate the Teafco Petascope carrier offered by PortTronics or a Herman Miller Aeron offered by OfficeDesigns, but was able to find Calphalon Katana knives offered by Southeast Clearance Consolidators. And forget searching for something more vague, like "green dress." The search is already so general that TextBuyIt doesn't know what to do and just feeds you book titles that are vaguely similar to what you are looking for.

It's clear from this that TextBuyIt is meant mostly for buying what Amazon is known for: books and music, with some other stuff sprinkled in. Of course, Amazon could expand TextBuyIt's scope over time, eventually enabling users to find and buy anything in its expansive catalog.

Overall, the process was painless and a pleasure to use, although for me personally, it might have been even simpler if I had just used Amazon.com's specialized iPhone web interface. Still, TextBuyIt could certainly come in handy for a quick price comparison on anything while you're out and about, and could prove useful to those who are impatient or use less-capable mobile phones.